The number of gun owning Americans drops to lowest number in 40 years, and yet more guns than ever are being sold. Wait, what?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The percent of American households owning guns is at a near-40 year low in the latest CBS News poll released this month. 

According to the survey, which was conducted among 1,001 Americans in the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting, 36 percent of U.S. adults either own a firearm personally, or live with someone who does. That's the lowest rate of gun ownership in the CBS poll going back to 1978. It's down 17 points from the highest recorded rate in 1994, and nearly 10 percentage points from 2012.

So that good news right?

Hold that thought.

But gun purchases, as measured by FBI firearm background checks, are at historic highs. And data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms shows that gun manufacturers are churning out record numbers of guns. Many gun rights advocates argue that these figures mean that the overall number of gun owners is growing: If more guns are being sold, more people must be owning guns.

So WTF exactly?

Well I think many of you are probably going to guess how both of these two facts can both be true, and it is more than a little troubling.

But the declining rates of gun ownership across three major national surveys suggest a different explanation: that most of the rise in gun purchases is driven by existing gun owners stocking up, rather than by people buying their first gun. A Washington Post analysis last year found that the average American gun owner now owns approximately eight firearms, double the number in the 1990s.

That's right, there are fewer Americans who now own guns, but the ones that do are often in possession of a small arsenal.

This is not indicative of your typical sports hunter or your average dad or mom worried about protecting their family.

No most likely these are the folks who really believe that the government is coming to take away our guns and who have convinced themselves that only they and their fifteen semi-automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition stand between freedom and an Obama controlled police state.

In other words these are the folks who get their news from World Net Daily every morning, have Alex Jones blasting on their radio on the way to work, think Sarah Palin would have been the greatest VP in history, and who are anxious to cast their vote for Donald J. Trump in November.

They are also the folks who thought those UN vehicles in Virginia were a clear sign of the new world order, believe fluoride in our water is an attempt at mind control, and who spend several weekends a year running around the woods in their GI Joe Underoos preparing to repel imaginary invaders.

In short, they are exactly the kinds of people who we should NEVER allow to have access to guns.

And yet, they do.

South Carolina man arrested with thousand and thousands of stolen guns in his home.

The face of the American ammosexual.

Courtesy of the Charlotte Observer:  

In his 30 years of law enforcement, about the largest illegal stash of weapons Chesterfield County, S.C., Sheriff Jay Brooks ever investigated was 50 guns. 

“And that was considered an arsenal,” Brooks said. 

Saturday, his deputies arrested 51-year-old Brent Nicholson of Pageland after they found thousands – their best estimate is 7,000 to 10,000 – of handguns and rifles stacked at his house and in a nearby storage building. They found hundreds more at a liquor store Nicholson runs with his father and at his parents’ home, Brooks said. 

“There were so many guns we quit counting after a while,” the sheriff said. 

As it turns out the vast majority of the weapons were stolen. Some Nicholson stole himself, others he bought from burglars and thieves.

“There’s no evidence that he even used them,” Brooks said. “There’s no evidence that he was selling them – he just wanted them. His house looked like that hoarders program on TV.” 

The sheriff said Nicholson may have stolen some of the merchandise, but he likely bought most of it from other thieves. “They steal this stuff from homes, or hunting lodges or cabins, and sell it for $100 a pistol,” he said. 

Hoarding thousands of weapons that you will never have reason to use, if that is not the NRA's version of the American dream I don't know what is. 

This is of course the flaw in the gun nuts argument that "if owning guns were criminalized only criminals would have guns."

What they tend to leave out is that guns stolen by criminals are most often taken from the homes of people who purchased them legally.

Fewer guns means fewer guns to steal, and fewer guns to steal means fewer guns used in robberies, and fewer guns used in ANY way means fewer bullets being fired into the bodies of the American people.

Was there a Right Wing connection to the shooting in Connecticut?

Nancy Lanza, mother and victim of Sandy Hill shooter.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

The mother of Newtown school massacre gunman Adam Lanza was a survivalist who was stockpiling food because she thought the world economy was on the verge of collapse. 

Nancy Lanza began hoarding food and water because she feared that the onging financial crisis was going to bring about the end of civilized society. 

She reportedly became 'obsessed' with guns and taught Adam how to shoot, but on Friday in a grim twist he blasted her to death while she laid in her own bed. 

The disclosure raises the prospect that Adam could have had the same apocalyptic views as his mother, and that she could have even encouraged them in him. 

The Mayan Apocalypse, which the ancient Mayan people thought would mark the end of the world, will supposedly take place on December 21, although it is not clear if Adam thought that was the case. 

In an interview the killer's aunt said Nancy Lanza was 'self-reliant' and indicated she was a 'prepper', or a person who prepares for Doomsday by learning essential survival skills - like how to shoot a gun. 

Speaking from her home near Chicago, Marsha Lanza, 57, said: 'She was stockpiling food. We talked about prepping a lot. She was getting ready for the economic collapse.

So where exactly does one get the idea that the economy is going to collapse, the world is going to become apocalyptic, and that the answer to survival is to stockpile weapons?

Much of that information comes courtesy of Fox News and Right Wing radio, which has stated emphatically that the reelection of President Obama would usher in the end of America as we know it and promoted the idea of safety as requiring possession of handguns and assault rifles.

Fox News is well known for trumpeting EVERY incident of a person defending their home or business by brandishing a gun, in order to reenforce the notion of handguns as a deterrence to crime, and of course the bread and butter of Right Wing radio is the constant relaying of Obama conspiracy theories.

However it is impossible to lay all of the blame on those fringe sources of information, since the National Geographic channel incredibly has a program dedicated to this, entitled Doomsday Preppers.

In case anybody wonders where the harm is in frightening people with a constant barrage of crazed conspiracy theories, well now we know.

I am going to tell you right now, that if we DON'T soon learn that Nancy Lanza was not a constant listener to Right Wing propaganda and Fox News it will because somebody is working to make damn sure that news does not get out.